Saturday, September 20, 2008

I had a winning night

I think its been a few weeks now.

I won about $60 or so playing 50nl.

I finally got the 14000 full tilt points I wanted to get for the Scottevest ultimate hoodie. However, I'm not sure if I still want it. I forgot there was going to be a full tilt logo on it. Will I actually want to wear it outside? Is it easy to get the logo off? Not sure what I want to do.

Hopefully my downswing is over. Since March I've been running a bit poorly in NL, limt and tourneys. Somehow I'm down like 700 across 3 sites. 200 was from a shot at 1/2 NL. About 300 at 1/2 limit. The rest is 50NL 6max and some heads up.

I guess I should stay away from limit. I was pretty much break even raking up frequent player points when I had one night that was just horrible. Sets getting killed by flushes and straights left and right. My favorite hands are the ones like KQQ flop with AQ, turn A and then river K.

It is so much easier getting points playing limit, although most of the stuff in the store I can just buy without blinking an eye anyway. Not sure why I put so much value in it. I guess I just consider it free stuff and I like the sound of that. Of course my free stuff actually cost me a few hundred bucks in reality. As long as I have a net gain its still free in the long run right? Just a smaller per hour earn. I hope that consistently becomes positive again.

I also got the new tournament book by Rizen, Apestyles and Pearljammer today. Not sure when I'll get a chance to read it but I'm looking forward to it.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

for now

Where do I go now?

I played about 6 tournaments last night and cashed in 2. I won a $26 token in the $6 tourney where top 37 got tokens and I cashed in the $3 rebuy on Full Tilt finishing 37th.

I've played maybe a few hundred hands of cash poker in the last week and a half. Nothing exciting.

My trial version of Pokertracker 3 ended and I have been pushing off buying it. On Matt's recommendation, I decided to try Hold'em Manager. I really like it but I can't get it to import my Full Tilt hand histories. I haven't spent any time troubleshooting that yet though.

I'm trying to figure out what my poker goals are. I like tournaments but I hate having to sit down for 5 hours straight to go deep in them. I then hate that after 5 hours I may still have very little to show for it unless you finish at the top.

I like cash games but the swings are starting to kill me. Volume is necessary at the lower limits and I'm not sure how far I want to push it.

I used to rock sit and goes but looking at hourly rates, do I really want to just start playing the $16 turbos again and have to play more than 4 at a time to make any kind of decent money?

Do I want to join another training site? Do I even have time to watch any of the videos?

A part of me wants to play bigger tournaments and finally win one that has a field over 100 players. As many cashes as I've had, I don't think I've ever won one in a big field. I had a second in a 180 man and I finished 19th in the $11 rebuy once. I yearn for the cash and glory.

The cash games have pretty much been one thing for me this year. They have been a way to get points to get free stuff out of their stores. So far I've gotten a Full Tilt hockey jersey and an Ipod Touch. Do I want to just keep putting in the volume there to get more?

Do I really want to put the volume in for tournaments? It's fun playing big events here and there but to really handle swings, I'd have to play a lot more. I said my best finish in a 180 man sit and go is 2nd. But I've probably only played 60 or 70 total in the last few years. I'd need to play hundreds to see any kind of statistical significance for ROI.

I may play a bunch this weekend but the next couple of weeks playing will be sparce. In mid September I'll figure out whether I want to stick with PT3 or Holdem Manager and then decide on training as well.

Maybe I should stop thinking of poker as a way to make money and enjoy the game for what it is.

Or I can win the $11 rebuy tonight (please) and my questions will be answered.

In other news, I lost $30 with QQ against a donk who called my $8 3 bet with K3 and flopped a king. He was a nut and just shoved the flop after calling out of position. It was a pot sized bet so I called and byebye money.

Last night I lost a buy in when I had JJ on 873 flop with 2 callers. I bet $5 into $7 pot, one caller. turn is a 5, I bet $12, donk calls. River is a king. Pot is like $36, he has $24 left. I check figuring I'll only get called by a better hand so I might as well let the guy bluff. He shoves, I call...he shows me AKo :(

I'm now up $10 for the month in cash games after losing $230 the last two days. I keep making stupid mistakes. ARGH

Friday, August 08, 2008

The new aggressive me - results so far

The first set of stats I was mostly 1 or 2 tabling. After my aggression increase, I started playing 3 or 4 tables and sometimes even 5. So you will see my BB/100 go down, but my hourly rate go up.

My BB/100 has gone down because of the multitabling, partly because I have sometimes gotten a little too aggressive and picked some bad spots to bluff. Some of it is variance as well (like AA losing to KK), but I can think of 3 or 4 buy ins that I lost because of overplaying my hand.

The stats:

So I've basically gone from 20/10 to 21/14.5

My aggression factor has gone from 1.65 to 3.5

I still think there is room to play more hands preflop. I have been on a few tables with some nuts or really loose players on my left that I didn't want to open up as much on the CO. I'm slowly adding more hands and hoping to play around 22/18ish. One place I can add hands a little perhaps is from the blinds. I've gotten overly tight in the blinds so that I am not playing out of position as much.

I have been 3 betting more instead of cold calling depending on position and type of opponent.

My went to showdown has gone down a little as I've been winning more pots preflop and my won money at showdown has gone down as well as I've tried bluffing (poorly) or semi-bluffing more. Two of my big river bluffs that I lost I still think may work enough of the time to show a profit but unfortunately that's high variance.

As I've been playing more hands, I've gotten into more marginal post flop situations so I think there is still a lot of improvement to be made in figuring out when to hit the breaks. I can think of a number of times where I figured a guy's most likely hand and I still tried to push him off it but alas it was not to be.

In general my biggest mistakes seem to come when I just don't believe people when they check raise or limp reraise. I inevitably seem to always have TT, JJ or QQ and I lose to a slightly higher overpair or set. Some of this is just acting too fast and overplaying hands.

This is all a great learning experience and it even got me to play a little more aggressively in the Thursday night chiptalk.net tourney which I managed to win this week! Not an easy victory though. I was chip leader on the bubble with 4 left, took a nice beat with QQ vs JTo to drop me to last, then managed to win a race with AJ vs 99 and crippling the other short stack (sorry Ten!) and finally get into the money. Went up and down, got the chip lead back with AK vs A2 and managed to hit a set heads up to cripple Links_Slayer. Woo!

Sunday, August 03, 2008

Aggression is key

When I started playing NL again a few days ago, I slipped back into my old passive ways. I was calling with marginal hands out of the BB to defend and then check folding. I was calling a lot of hands in position trying outplay people post flop but not really pushing people out of hands. And i was definitely not opening enough pots from the CO and button.

And as the graph below shows, I have really been losing a lot when not getting to showdown. This says I wasn't buying enough pots, firing second barrels, raising people off medium weak hands and definitely not 3 betting enough.

Now maybe its just variance but I the graph makes it looks like I've learned how to stop the bleeding. Hand 2911 is the first hand of the session where I got my aggression back on.

It was another swingy day though. i was up $70 after a few hundred hands. I lost a buyin back after getting all in on the flop with over pair vs flush draw and then I played 3 hands really really horribly. the first two made me lose $100. I got too aggressive and lost $50 when i got check raised on a QT9 flop when holding AJ. for some reason I needed to shove and get called by QT. Need to reanalyze that hand.

The second big loss there was a badly played AQ I guess. I raised out of the BB to 7 after a button raise to 2. flop came A74. I led out and he min raised me. I shoved and of course he calls with AK.

The third hand I played really really horribly was my luckbox hand of the day after being on tilt from those other 2 hands. This all happened in a 5 minutes span by the way.

I raise from the BB to 3 after 2 limpers with AhQs. flop comes J63 all hearts. I bet 7 and they both call. Turn is 6s. Over $30 in the pot so I say "well I still have outs and fold equity." I shove and get called by both. One has me covered, the other only had $10 left. BOOM ACE ON THE RIVER. One guy had KcKs, other guy has 2s2h? So I won $70 back there and that got me focused again. I guess continuing to bet is a lot better than calling off there at least. So maybe this has better EV than I think it does. Will analyze this as well.

Now I paid more attention to what I was doing and made sure everything I did was done for a reason. It paid off and I ended up winning 137 for the day. Nice comeback.

I'm feeling good again about how I'm playing. I just need to keep focused and not let frustration overpower reason.

KEY

About me

I'm Scottwire

From NJ

Hi there. I started this blog mainly to keep track of how I'm doing playing poker as well as to vent, share my thoughts and feelings, and allow friends and family to follow along. Thanks to everyone following along whether I know you or not.
About me - I am currently a web developer who is trying to become a successful Entrepreneur with my wife. We love to travel and are trying to become successful enough to do that as we please :) That's us in a nutshell.